Tag: animism (Page 1 of 2)

Animism

June 7, 2024 / John D. / 0 Comments

The following is taken from a Japan News article entitled ‘Urban Japanese Losing Touch With Animistic Roots; Soulful Greenery Gives Way to Soulless Cement’ by Kagefumi Ueno (a civilization essayist and a former Japanese ambassador to Guatemala (2001-04) and the Holy See (2006-10).)

The article is notable for depicting the friction between modernity and Japan’s traditional animism. As well as considering the literary history, the piece suggests that the dualism of Western science with an animist mindset underlies the ‘mystique’ that attracts so much foreign interest in Japan.

Yomiuri Shimbun file photo. Aerial photo of the Meiji Jingu Gaien area in central Tokyo is seen in September 2023.. The greenery is under threat from urban development.

Kagefumi Ueno writes…

May 23, 2024

The season of hanami cherry blossom viewing parties has passed. Some people — especially visitors to Japan from abroad — may have wondered why such huge numbers of people gathered around the flowering trees with bento lunches and cups of sake.

As I see it, they were out there not just to view the blossoms but also to empathize with the flowers for their ephemerality. In full bloom for just a few fleeting days, they present an analogy to human mortality. It may not be an exaggeration to say that Japanese hanami-goers deem the cherry blossoms to be their kin. Such sentiment appears to be almost animistic.

Indeed, the Japanese often regard animals or even plants as their fellow beings. In the Heian period (794-late 12th century), an era of aristocracy, poets such as Kino Tsurayuki and Saigyo Hoshi, a Buddhist monk, lamented the short lives of flowers, meaning the short lives of people.

In the Edo period (1603-1867), the most renowned haiku poet Matsuo Basho conveyed the profundity of nature through depictions of crows, frogs, cicadas and so forth. Kobayashi Issa, another haiku master known as a lover of small animals, made poems expressing his sympathetic feelings towards sparrows, flies and even mosquitos. These poets had sharp sensibilities to the changing voices of nature in an animistic way.

Their works are classic manifestations of the animistic or pantheistic tradition of Japanese literature. Even today, such sensibilities are nearly omnipresent in the daily lives of many people in Japan.

Indeed, it should be added that Japanese revere not just the souls of animals, but also souls of inanimate objects such as machinery and utensils, which are honored through kuyo “funeral services” when their useful lives come to an end.

In this context, I am of the view that there are two basic cultures in the world. One stands on an assumption that inanimate matter is just material. The other assumes that matter is not just material but meta-material or spiritual. That’s why people embodying the latter culture sometimes hold funeral services even for objects.

The Japanese accept and value the modern science that began flooding into the nation about 150 years ago, and they have made great contributions to it as well — shown by the many Nobel Prizes won by Japanese scientists. Yet even so, the Japanese still preserve the animistic mindset as something natural and inherent. Hence, modernism and traditionalism cohabit without acute contradiction at school or at work. People adhere to modernism professionally while fostering traditionalism in the private sphere, forming the cultural dualism or hybridity that characterizes modern Japan. Some say this duality is part of the Japan mystique that attracts many of the foreign tourists who are now flooding into the nation.

The intake of Western civilization thus has not annihilated animism in the modernization process. Lately, however, Japanese animism faces another threat to its survival due to drastic urban development in big Japanese cities. Obviously, animistic traits are nurtured by a rich environment of trees and greenery. But deforestation and massive urban development have transformed big cities into barren expanses of soulless concrete.

This metamorphosis is weakening the animism of the Japanese. Younger generations here are less likely to regard matter as something spiritual. To them, giving funeral services to lifeless objects seems a bit weird. Some of them unequivocally say that they have little interest in animism as it is unscientific and belongs to bygone days.

Against this backdrop, one could say that urban civilization is unfriendly towards animism. Lamentably in Japan’s megacities, immense construction projects are now underway at the expense of trees and greenery. For example, a redevelopment project in the Meiji Jingu Gaien area in central Tokyo includes a plan to cut down many tall trees, triggering a big debate. [See photo above.]

This situation reminds me of Western conservative intellectuals such as T. S. Eliot, who were displeased with urban civilization and regarded it as a sign of mankind’s arrogance or sin. Be they in the East or in the West, old-school conservatives tend to share similar ethos.

All in all, one should be fully aware that the excessive de-greening of Japanese cities may further weaken or endanger animistic culture in Japan. Without healthy and robust animism, how could Japan be Japanese?

Author of the article, Kagefumi Ueno

Japanese animism

February 14, 2024 / John D. / 0 Comments

Interesting article in the Japan News by a former Japanese diplomat, Kagefumi Ueno. It begins by noting the recent upturn in the number of pet funerals, and widens out to conclude with observations about modernity and tradition in the Japanese mindset.

****************************

Nature-centric rock worship (photos by John Dougill)

Kagefumi Ueno writes: “Even in historically non-Christian Asian countries such as China and Korea, I understand that they seldom offer funeral services for pets, possibly for cultural reasons. In part they tend to notionally distinguish people from animals, which could be described as anthropocentric. In contrast, the Japanese, who are generally much less anthropocentric or more nature-centric, draw such distinctions less sharply.

Indeed, it is not only pets whose souls the Japanese revere. They revere or soothe the souls of many categories of dead animals — ranging from animals sacrificed for medical testing to fish or shrimps or whales that are caught and eaten, to police dogs and so forth.

They do this through religious ceremonies called kuyo — also held for deceased human beings — that are by and large officiated by Shinto or Buddhist clergy. They pay tribute to the animals’ sacrifice. Even today kuyo ceremonies for animals take place almost everywhere in Japan. For example, if you visit the Tsukiji Namiyoke Jinja shrine in Tokyo, you can see stone monuments for the fish, clams, eggs and even kombu seaweed that were once sold at the nearby Tsukiji Market.

Nor is the inclusion of kombu so unusual. The Japanese hold kuyo ceremonies even for inanimate objects — used utensils such as needles and kitchen knives, used medical syringes, used pens and brushes, used factory machinery and so forth — in order to thank these objects for the services they offered for a long time, just before they are disposed of. It is to soothe their spirits or souls.

While I was serving as the Japanese ambassador to Guatemala over 20 years ago, a Guatemalan government minister who was of Mayan origin told me that indigenous Mayan people similarly practice religious ceremonies to thank machinery for its hard work just before it is scrapped. Like them, the Japanese sometimes regard even lifeless things as people by sensing their souls. Moreover, they also sense divinity even in the lowliest insects or smallest plants. Many scholars call this mind-set animistic, pantheistic or polytheistic.

Below the surface of the popularity of pet funerals, one may perceive a very animistic or pantheistic ethos or sentiment at the basic stratum of Japanese culture. It is a trait the Japanese may share with Mayans or some of the indigenous peoples of North America.

This animism or pantheism has significant visible, tangible aspects as well as non-visible, abstract aspects.

Sacred waterfall at Nachi, in Wakayama Prefecture

First, at a visible, tangible level, the Japanese as nature worshippers adore mountains, springs, lakes, waterfalls, rocks, majestic trees, the observable planets, and so forth, much like the Mayans, Pre-Christian Celts or Australian Indigenous people. These things are deemed to be divine or sacred. That’s why many Shinto shrines are in the vicinity of those sacred things to facilitate the worship of their divinity.

Against this backdrop, many classic works of Japanese literature — notably the Manyoshu , a compilation of classic waka poems of the eighth century, and haiku by 17th-century poet Matsuo Basho — are not seldom manifestations of such animistic or pantheistic sentiment.

Second, at a more abstract or spiritual level, the Japanese tend to identify themselves with Mother Nature or the Universe and have a sense of unity with Nature or a sense of belonging to it. They believe that they can reach the ultimate spiritual stage only when or after they become absorbed by or melted into Nature by discarding their self or ego. A Mayan or a pre-Christian Celt might share a similar cosmovision.

It should now be clear that at the basis of today’s Japanese civilization lie two distinctive elements, namely the animistic ethos on one hand and modernism and rational thinking on the other. Hence, contemporary Japanese civilization could be interpreted as a hybrid of two very distinctive and sometimes contradictory things, namely, pre-modernity and modernity. Whereas their pre-modern half urges people to revere souls of waterfalls, trees or mountains in an animistic manner, their rational half urges them to take a scientific approach, setting aside animistic mentality. It is a kind of dualism or hybridity. The two halves sometimes clash. However, more often they coexist without conspicuous conflicts.

It may be a source of wonder or amazement that the 150-year process of modernization and industrialization of Japan did not substantially extinguish the people’s animistic mentality. Thus, even today, Japanese high technology is taken care of by those who abound in animistic ethos. Don’t take it as a contradiction.”

Collection space for the kuyo (soul pacification) of old dolls

Japan by Train 23: Iki Island

January 20, 2023 / John D. / 2 Comments

For those interested in Shinto, Iki is a very special island. Palm trees and a Shinto torii greet visitors, and a welcome poster announces that this is ‘the island of kami’. A brochure promoting the island even claims that here lies the origin of Shinto. I was fortunate in my visit in that a Canadian friend Chad Kohalyk was living on the island and kindly offered to drive me around. He proved an excellent guide.

*******************

The next day Chad had devised a custom-made tour for me. First and foremost was the island’s prime attraction, Monkey Rock. No prizes for guessing why. In fact the likeness was uncanny. Shaped by wind and salt water, the creature looks pensively towards the horizon, as if contemplating the future of monkeykind. It would make the perfect prop for Planet of the Apes. There is something too of King Kong in the formidable size, for it stands on a vertical piece of cliff that rises a massive twenty-five meters from the sea.

Nature’s artwork here reminded me of the large shamanic rock overlooking Seoul, which resembles a monk casting a protective eye over the city. On the slopes around it worshippers pray directly to the rock face. Sacred rock in Japan has long intrigued me, for it forms the essence of ancient Shinto. Most of the major shrines in the country originated with worship of a numinous rock (iwakura), yet curiously there is almost nothing written about it. The standard book on Shinto, by Ono Sokyo, does not contain a single mention of rocks. It is puzzling, but over the years I have pieced together my own understanding.

For ancient humans rock stood for permanence, in contrast to vegetation which was perishable. Humans were impermanent of course, but on death their spirit was thought to live on forever. Rocks were therefore associated with the dead, and came to be seen as a vessel into which spirits could enter. In other words they were physical containers for what was intangible and invisible, which is why they were revered as ‘spirit-bodies’ (goshintai).

Inari style torii tunnel. Iki island is full of atmospheric shrines.

Sacred rocks are particularly prominent along the ancient migration route leading from Korea to northern Kyushu, then along the fringes of the Inland Sea to the Yamato heartland in Nara. Since Korea had a formative influence on early religion in Japan, and since Korean shamanism derives from Siberia, it struck me that in prehistoric times Shinto-style shamanism too would have its origins there.

One day, while internet surfing, a picture popped up on my screen of an outcrop on the edge of Lake Baikal. My heart leapt up, and the minute I saw it, I knew with absolute certainty that I had to go there. It was located on the island of Olkhon in the middle of the lake, and contained a sacred cave venerated by the Buryat Mongols as the origin of shamanism. That summer I flew to Siberia, and sat on a slope overlooking the cave, which it was forbidden to enter. Prayer flags fluttered in the wind, and as I pondered the scene thoughts coursed through my mind. Could it be that within the dark mystery of the vaginal opening lay the origin of Japanese rock worship?

In shamanic thinking distinctive features are an indication of spiritual power. The leading shaman at Lake Baikal has six fingers, and in Japan rocks with striking shapes are attributed to divine creation. So I asked Chad if there was any evidence of rituals being conducted at the Monkey Rock, hoping for support for my shamanic theory. Disappointingly he replied, ’Not as far as I know,’ and though he had been to meetings of Iki’s official guides, there had been no mention of any religious connection.

There are over 1000 shrines in Iki, testimony to the very real presence of kami in the island life. You get the feeling that here is the true soul of Shinto, rooted in folk belief rather than the top-down imperial Shinto set up by the Meiji government. Iki shrines speak to a tradition of animism, and as we drove around the island the bond with nature was everywhere apparent.

Kojima island, with the torii immersed in water, though at low tide one can walk across

Some of the shrines are very special. Take Kojima Shrine, for instance, which stands on a small island and is only accessible at low tide. It has one of those evocative torii at the water’s edge, whose pillars are submerged by the incoming tide. It represents immersion in the life-force, as if to remind us of cosmic powers beyond our control. Or take Sai Jinja’s large wooden phallus which stands erect before the Worship Hall. Though demonised by Christianity, the male organ is here a powerful force for good, promoting fertility, conjugal harmony, easy childbirth, and protection from sexual disease.

The three monkeys, with a difference. Fertility symbols were a common feature of worship until the Meiji reforms decided they were an embarrassment and largely did away with them.

Japan by Train 9: Dewa Sanzan

July 6, 2022 / John D. / 0 Comments

Sanzan means three mountains, in this case referring to Mt Haguro (414 m / 1360 ft), Mt Gassan (1984m / 6509 ft) and Mt Yudono (1504m / 4934ft ). The three sacred mountains in Yamagata Prefecture are said to represent the past, present and future, but practically speaking the small hill of Mt Haguro acts as entry point for Mt Gassan, where ascetic exercises are performed. The more remote Mt Yudono, only accessible by walkers, serves as holy sanctuary, and in the past worshippers were required not to speak of what they saw there.

According to tradition, Mt Haguro grants happiness, Mt Gassan consolation, and Mt Yudono rebirth. Since I was not looking for rebirth, nor did I feel in need of consolation, I decided the gentle slopes of Mt Haguro would suit me just fine. In fact I had visited once before and remembered fondly the magical sight of its five storied pagoda – a work of art in harmony with the surrounding cedars. Santoka, the wandering poet, wrote of Westerners conquering mountains whereas Easterners contemplate them, while he himself ’tasted’ them. I knew what he meant, for the fine taste of Haguro lingered on my lips.

The bus from Tsuruoka emerges into a timeless landscape in which tiny figures in farmer’s clothing are dwarfed by misty mountains, as in a Chinese ink painting. When we reached the foothills, a large torii straddling the road announced we were entering the realm of the kami, and to either side were conspicuous signs of religiosity – shrines, buddhist statues, and shimenawa rice rope denoting sacred objects. Most striking of all was an enormous oversized haraegushi (purification stick) that looked like a relic from the Age of the Gods, when heroic figures and giant ogres strode the countryside.

At the entrance to the trail up Mt Haguro stood a run-down public toilet, placed strategically for the relief of visitors to the realm of the sacred. Despite its mosquito-ridden condition, someone had taken the trouble to place social distance markers on the floor. It was impressive. Even here, alongside the ancient traditions, modern hygiene prevailed.

Immediately on entering the woods the fresh fragrance of cedar became apparent and it was noticeably cooler, welcome relief indeed on such a warm day. Noticeboards announced with a concern for precision that the pathway had 2446 steps, and that lining the righthand side were 281 trees while lining the left were 301. This was thanks to the 50th head priest, who had laid out the approach over a period of thirteen years in the seventeenth century.

English language signage added to the site of a sacred cherry tree

The pathway into the woods begins with a gentle descent, accompanied by the refreshing sound of water running down either side. Since my last visit there had been a significant change in that signs were bilingual for the benefit of tourists, and in front of a small wooden shrine was an announcement in English; ’Presiding kami Amenotajikarao no mikoto, Divine virtue: Proficiency in arts and sports.’ It seemed an invitation to pray, and praying in Japan means paying, so I tossed a coin into the offertory box and prayed for proficiency in arts. The sports I was willing to forego.

Further along the trail, the outline of a pagoda became apparent. From a distance it was barely discernible amongst the trees, for though it is an impressive twenty-nine meters high (95ft), it nestles beneath the canopy of the surrounding cedars. The result is a harmonious blending of art and nature. The impossibly tall trees have slender trunks stretching skywards as if reaching for heaven, while the pagoda exhibits elegance combined with stunning craftsmanship. If you stand below it and try to work out how the joints fit together, your brain is sure to get scrambled. And all that interconnecting complexity is done without the use of nails.

At this point, covered in a film of sweat, I decided I had had enough. Foolishly I had not brought any water, and my back was aching. I had intended to press on to the thatched buildings of Dewa Shrine, but I knew the kami would forgive me if I turned back. On the bus to Tsuruoka, I watched the mountains recede into the distance and thought of Basho. Trained in Zen, he was open to all forms of spirituality as is the Japanese way, and he had managed the full course at Dewa Sanzan, austerities and all. But then, I consoled myself, he was a mere forty-five at the time. When he visited, It had also been a warm day and he wrote of relief from the summer heat.

The coolness
And a faint three-day moon –
Mount Haguro

After a week at Minamidani (South Valley), Basho climbed the more demanding Mt Gassan and did ascetic exercises, before proceeding to Mt Yudono. Given the taboo on revealing what happens there, he cleverly wrote of it by not writing of it. (The Tsuruoka tourist board are less compliant, for their brochure explicitly describes the sacred object of worship.)

Yudono
of which I may not tell –
sleeves wet with tears

The mountain experience stimulated the poet’s imagination, and brought out his playful side too. The ‘De-’ of Dewa Sanzan means exiting, or emerging, and Basho used this in a haiku that sees him emerge from the mountains not to some great spiritual insight, but to vegetables. The ‘first of the season’ eggplants were prepared specially for him by his pupil, Nagayama Juko.

How unusual –
emerging from Dewa
to first eggplants

Sacred rock used as a marker for training by Shugendo practitioners

*********************

For another Green Shinto piece on Dewa Sanzan, please click here.

Donald Richie on Shinto

January 7, 2021 / John D. / 1 Comment

Donald Richie (left) handing over a signed copy of his book to one of his fans

Donald Richie was one of three American giants of Japanese culture in the postwar years, together with Donald Keene and Edward Seidensticker. He came to speak at my university and was kind enough to write a foreword for my book on Kyoto. Like many others, I loved his travel writing in The Inland Sea, and amongst the many thoughtful insights is a passage on Shinto that deserves wider recognition. So here it is, hung around a visit to an out of the way hillside shrine he had come across. (pages 25-27 in the Stone Bridge Press edition)

****************

Many Shinto shrines lie on heights. One goes up and up and up to worship. The steps lead straight into the sky and are always steep. It is work to reach such a shrine. The faithful must arrive puffing, gasping, senses reeling. This is as it should be. One arrives as though new born, helpless, vulnerable. One’s panting sounds in the ears because a shrine is very quiet, quieter than a church. A church is hushed because one is made to be quiet; a shrine is simply quiet. It is so far away that noise does not reach.

You yourself may be as noisy as you please. Gasps for breath, eventual shouts and laughter, are quickly swallowed up. You speak in a normal voice as you walk about, investigating everything, peering behind this door, into that box. The reverent, the hushed, the awed – these have small place in a shrine. If there is any restraint, it comes from nature itself. You may lower your voice, just as you naturally lower your voice in a grove or a gorge. If you feel like it, you impose a willing silence upon yourself.

Shinto prayer is not communal prayer. It is solitary and spontaneous. No one says when to begin or when to stop. You choose your own time. You speak to the gods in the way you might greet your hosts at a party. It is a discreet, friendly, happy, polite prayer.

Apparently no came to pray any more in this small shrine. The stone steps had been forced apart n places by roots of trees grown large after the shrine was built. the only motion in this tangle of bushes and weeds were the large red crabs that, looking already cooked, refused to move, menaced with waving cleft claws, and denied being afraid.

AT the top one is ready for the god. One is reeling, fainting, panting. And there, as though for reward, spread out like a banquet, is a view of the other side of the bay, the sea, the distant farther island, all gleaming in the setting sun, as though cast from bronze and floating on lacquer.

Here at the top it was still day, though below, back toward the village, the sea was clouded and the beach was darkening. The shrine, seen through a line of trees, gleamed a rich yellow, the color of cut wood in sunlight. It was silent. I heard the cicadas the moment they ceased.

Walking through the clinging weeds I crossed to the shrine and stood before the votive box. The god was just inside the closed doors in front of me. I pulled the rope of the god-summoning rattle. The sound was like that of a dry husk shaken. These gods have no bells – the only sound they know is this dusty sound of dried seeds shaken by the winds.

Shinto is nature. Perhaps animism – and Shinto is the only formal animistic religion left – is the true religion. It has roots deep in all of us. One recognizes this. It is the only religion that can inspire the feeling children know when the wind or a rock is made god for a week or a day. Its essence is unknown. The religion speaks to us, to something in us which is deep and permanent.

Once I had sounded the rattle, once its rasping cry, like the quiver of a cicada, had died, once the god was looking from his trellised door way, I was afraid not to give. The votive box looked hungry, its slats like teeth.

The Shinto gods are near us. they prefer money. I dropped a coin; then, not knowing what else to do, shook the rattle again. A dark shape stood for a second against the sky, whirled about me, was a speck of black in the darkening sky, was gone. It was a bat.

****

One of the many buildings at Ise that is rebuilt every twenty years

Climbing slowly down the shadowed tones, I thought of Ise, the greatest shrine of all, the mother shrine, home of the Sun Goddess herself. A visit to any shrine, as humble and forgotten a one as this, leads one to consider such imponderables as life, death. Thoughts of ancient Ise led me to consider another – time.

Time for the West is a river. Down its changing yet forever unchanging length we float. In the East, however, the river is more. a symbol for life, our earthly span, the ukiyo, than it is for time itself.

Time has no symbol in this Asia where almost everyone, at least formerly, lived in a continuous and unvarying present. If it had one, it might be a symbol as startlingly up-to-date as the oscillating current. The reason this occurs is Ise – not only one of the great religious complexes of the world but the only answer yet discovered to man’s universal wish either to invent the perfect perpetual-motion machine or, else, to stop time entirely.

The way to stop time, the Japanese discovered, is letting it have its own way Just as the shape of nature is observed, revered, so is the contour of time. Every twenty years – and for over a thousand years – the shrine at Ise is razed and a new one is erected on an adjacent plot reserved for that purpose. After only two decades, the beam-ends barely weathered, the copper turned to palest green, the shrine is destroyed. Only twenty generations of spiders have spun their webs, only four or five generations of swallows have built their nests, not even a single blink has covered the great staring eye of eternity – yet down come the great cross-beams, off come the reed roofs, and the pillars are carried off to be reused in other parts of the shrine grounds.

On the adjacent plot is constructed a shrine that is in all ways similar to the one just dismantled. More, it is identical. Something dies, something is born, and the two things are the same. This ceremony, the sengushiki is a living exemplar of the greatest of religious mysteries, the most profound of human truths.

And time at last comes to a stop. Forever old, forever new, the shrines stand there for all eternity. This – and not the building of pyramids, or ziggurats, not the erection of Empire State Building or Tokyo Towers – is the way to stop time and make immortal that mortality which we cherish.

Animism (5): Pico Iyer

June 28, 2020 / John D. / 2 Comments

Pico Iyer is a writer with a worldwide following, who has lived in Japan for the past thirty years. He’s won awards and been hailed as ‘arguably the greatest living travel writer’. He’s noted in particular for his sensitivity in exploring cross-cultural themes and spiritual matters, two examples being Zen and the Dalai Lama.

Amongst his most recent books is A Beginner’s Guide to Japan, subtitled Observations and Provocations. The subtitle is more of a clue to the contents than the main title, for it’s not really a beginner’s guide so much as a collection of notes and reflections by a seasoned resident. (He lives for much of the year in Nara, and though married to a Japanese he remains on a tourist visa.)

The book has two pages on Japanese spirituality in a section entitled ‘Between the Torii Gates’ (though Through the Torii Gates would have better captured the sense of Wonderland). Much of what is said supports the notion of animist thinking as fundamental to the Japanese worldview, with observations that ‘People down the road to me pray to trees,’ and that ‘in the Shinto universe every last piece of dust and vegetable is believed to have a spirit.’

Just three pages before this, in true syncretic fashion, he observes that ‘A school of local thought holds that “mountains and rivers, grasses and flowers, can all become Buddhas.”‘

The absorption of Shinto values by Zen, explored previously by Green Shinto in a series of postings, is referenced too by Iyer in a couple of passages. ‘”Take care of things,” as the Zen teacher Shunryu Suzuki says, “and things will take care of you.”‘

‘When one of his Western students was having trouble cleaning toilets, Suzuki suggested talking to them as if they were friends, telling them how happy she was to get the chance to look after them. It worked.’

In a paragraph that reflects the raison d’etre of Green Shinto, he states that ‘It’s often noted how Japanese Buddhism has influenced the world, everywhere from the Zen reduction of sushi bars to the wabi-sabi aesthetic of white-on-white hotels. But the culture’s most striking cultural export these days is Shinto.’

Marie Kondo and the Oscar-winning films of Hayao Miyazaki are cited as examples. ‘Anime is the natural expression of an animist world,’ Iyer claims. This links in with the Japanese love of robots and mascots, contrasted with the tendency to minimise individualism in Japanese art.

‘When foreigners arrive in Japan, they sometimes remark – as I did, in 1985 – that the people around them look like robots. This may be less because the Japanese are so machinelike and dependable than because inanimate things in Japan possess so much spirit and life.’

Now there’s an observation and a provocation!

Animism (3) Marie Kondo

May 30, 2020 / John D. / 8 Comments

Previous postings in this series looked at trees (natural phenomena) and a subshrine of Yasui Konpira-gu in Kyoto which exemplifies the animist strand of Shinto. In this third posting we look at a world-famous individual with beliefs shaped by the religious heritage of Japan.

Through her books and television series on decluttering, Marie Kondo has achieved the status of a lifestyle guru. It’s a sad indictment of our time that over-consumerism has become such a problem that we need advice in how to cope with discarding unwanted material possessions. While much of the world has not enough to live on, privileged firstworld citizens have too much of everything.

What’s striking about Marie Kondo is the spiritual manner with which she approaches a simple physical task. She starts off, for instance, by greeting the house where she will work as if it is a living being – a kami, even. ‘I began this custom quite naturally based on the etiquette of worshipping at Shinto shrines,’ she says in The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up (p. 188).

She goes on to say that ‘The tense expectancy in the air when a client opens the door resembles the atmosphere when one passes under a shrine gate and enters the sacred precincts.’ Speak to your house and it will respond is her underlying message. The house has a soul, and so do its contents.

One of her key principles is to only keep items that serve as a source of joy. One might imagine that the mountain of unwanted things would be nonchalantly dismissed and discarded. However, these too must be shown respect and thanked before being sent off. Even then, they will leave behind the energy of wanting to be of service. This reminds one of the religious custom in Japan of mortuary rites for thanking unwanted dolls, or sewing needles, or ink brushes before their final sending off.

Behind Kondo’s thinking is the idea that objects absorb and transmit energy. This is particularly evident with things that are regularly touched, such as clothing. ‘As you run your hands over the cloth, you pour energy into it,’she says. ‘Therefore when you fold, we should put our heart into it, thanking our clothes for protecting our bodies.’

‘I began to treat my belongings as if they were alive when I was a high school student,’ Kondo asserts towards the end of her book (p.169). It’s this assumption that has proved vital in bringing her worldwide success based on a deep respect for what is normally dismissed as useless clutter.

It’s an attitude to the physical world that runs through Japanese culture. It means a greater respect for things, and an awareness that secondhand goods come bearing the spirit of their previous owner. Pottery is revered for those who have touched it in previous generations, and the thinking has enabled excellence in carpentry and numerous other crafts in which the raw material is treated with deep understanding. In this way it can be seen that Kondo is no kook, but heir to an ancient tradition that recognises the spirit in the sword, the anima in the inanimate.